“And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” Matthew 6.28-29
During our childhood, like many kids our age my brother and I converted our front yard into a veritable sports complex. During the late spring, we had a badminton court set up in the area that was most level, and whenever we could entice our parents to join us, the Phillips family became fierce competitors. Once the heat of summer settled over Iuka, the yard became a baseball diamond, and quite a few World Series were played on that turf. The only problem was that if a batter fouled a ball outside the first base line, it would go through the living room window, which happened at least once.
Then during this time of the year, that space became our gridiron. And it served that purpose quite well except for when two parallel rows of “surprise lilies” crossed our football field on what would have been about the forty-yard line. I say “about” because our field was not marked; we just knew approximately where the goal lines were.
We may have claimed the yard as our field, but the lilies were Mom’s, and she evidently subscribed to the view that they were better adorned than King Solomon. So, for the two weeks each fall when those flowers made their annual appearance along our forty-yard line, we were admonished to do our best not to destroy them in the process of making a touchdown. But football has enough challenges as it is without adding a requirement that players execute a steeplechase jump midfield over a double row of surprise lilies. Consequently, even with the best of intentions among us NFL wannabes, most of mom’s treasured flowers would not survive more than one game.
At some point in our young careers, Mom and her lilies were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief when we moved our games to a neighbor’s vacant corner lot. That space provided more than enough room for us to run intricate plays without fear of damaging plants. The only problem with that field was its topography: it was higher at one end than at the other. So, depending on which goal we were defending, one team enjoyed a decided downhill advantage. But contending on the unevenness of this new gridiron was a small price to pay for not having to worry about flowers.
Yet in retrospect, I do not remember ever getting into serious trouble with Mom about either the front window being shattered by a baseball or the lilies being tromped into the ground during football season. Parents seem to have a pretty good perspective on these things. Maybe they are just trying to teach us that even though the fields in the game of life are filled with obstacles and often not always level, we should still extend grace to each other.